Zynga, Amazon and Microsoft didn't do much different from recent patterns suggested in the third quarter, but the companies' abilities to boost their revenues led to big gains Thursday in late trading on Wall Street.

Zynga beat analysts' forecasts by announcing a narrow loss of just $68,000 on revenues of $203 million, though the social gaming company continued to shed users: Daily active players of the San Francisco company's games fell from 60 million to 30 million year-over-year. The company expects its performance in the current quarter to be worse, forecasting net losses of $21 million to $31 million and revenues of $175 million to $185 million.

"We are rewiring our organization for success by taking a longer term view on everything we do, which will help us to create value for our customers, our shareholders and our employees over the next decade," Mattrick said in Thursday's conference call.

Investors seemed to focus on Mattrick's overhaul of the executive suite and the company's ability to post lower losses and higher revenues than expected, pushing shares higher in after-hours trading. After closing with a 0.3 percent drop at $3.54, Zynga shares shot up more than 12 percent to around $4 in late trading, at times topping the company's 52-week high of $4.03.

North of Silicon Valley, Washington's two tech giants also exceeded analysts' projections despite the continuation of worrisome trends.

"There is no other company in the world that has such an awful history of profitability, but continues to be rewarded for it so handsomely," Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru told Bloomberg News.

Investors continued to reward Amazon on Thursday: After gaining 1.6 percent to $332.31, the stock jumped to record levels of more than $360 a share in late trading.

Microsoft continued to see lower revenue totals from its legacy business of software licensing for personal computers, but the company's other efforts paid off. The maker of Windows easily beat analysts' forecast for profits and revenues, announcing earnings of $5.24 billion, or 62 cents a share, on revenues of $18.5 billion, after announcing an organizational shake-up in July. The company's enterprise-focused commercial licensing accounting for more than half its revenues, $9.6 billion, a gain of 7 percent, while licensing revenue from consumer products -- namely Windows and Windows Phone -- declined 7 percent to $4.34 billion.

"Beating on revenue and earnings handily will boost confidence that the reorganization is pivoting them in the right direction," HighMark Capital portfolio manager Todd Lowenstein predicted to Reuters.

Investors did reward Microsoft's stock, pushing shares higher than $35 after they closed with a 0.1 percent decline at $33.72.

Activist investor Icahn on Thursday released a letter he sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook in which he says its "difficult to imagine why" Apple would not make the "unprecedented" move to buy back $150 billion of its own stock, more than twice as much as Apple now plans to purchase. The more publicly available stock Apple purchases, the less available on the public markets, which Icahn hopes would drive demand for, and the price of, Apple shares up from when he began purchasing $2 billion worth last summer. As is typical when Icahn makes a fuss over a stock he owns, the price went up Thursday, with shares gaining 1.3 percent to $531.91.

Tesla scored an executive from Apple on Thursday, which may have been the move it needed to reverse a recent plunge in its stock price. After two straight days of declines following the announcement of a U.S. investigation into a recent fire in a Model S, Tesla announced the hire of a hardware executive from Apple to lead its automobile development program, and the company's stock gained 5.3 percent to $173.15. The executive, Doug Field, has a history in the car business after starting out at Ford, and worked at Segway for many years as well.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Up 5.69, or 0.33 percent, to 1,752.07

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/jowens510.